He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2009 when a doctor found some blood in his urine after a crash on the track.

“But I went to the Masters championship in Portugal in 2010 – so I had roughly a year off. I got a silver which wasn’t too bad.”

“I want to prove that older people, with proper training, can improve their fitness in their 80s.”

Another top senior cyclist, Derek Woodings, 76, from Belper in Derbyshire, who was a professional in the 1960s and also raced at the weekend, said: “It is getting hard now – and I mean hard. Now I am hanging on most of the time.”

Image copyrightDerrick WoodingsImage caption Derrick Woodings, who is 76, twice won the UK 100-mile time trial in the 1960s